?  Meg Whitman looks increasingly like a candidate for the governor's gig.  She quit a couple boards of directors over the last few weeks. Great, just what we need, another political neophyte who thinks they can buy their way into the job.  That will never work...oh wait. The AP has it that she is going to announce soon.

Great, another Pro-Prop 8 Republican claiming to be moderate.  I have to think that some conservative will come in there and clean the clock of the "moderates" Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, and the true moderate Tom Campbell. As I see it, there is a real opportunity for a McClintock-esque grassroots conservative to get in the race and grab the nomination, with the moderate vote split.

Capitol watchers ordinarily would prepare this week for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's annual State of the State address, but the governor is delaying matters until a week from Thursday.

Schwarzenegger aides aren't saying exactly why the governor has decided to move his annual address to Jan. 15, but speculation is that the governor may want to broker a midyear budget deal before he speaks to his fellow Californians. Perhaps it's better to have reached a partial budget solution than to explain that things in Sacramento are completely fouled up.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg suggested Monday that a compromise could come together within "24 to 48 hours," though Schwarzenegger press secretary Aaron McLear insisted that talks have not improved since mid-December.

Ralph Drollinger, the controversial chaplain who ministers to lawmakers and staff in the Capitol during the legislative year, will no longer lead the weekly Bible studies.

Drollinger, who founded Capitol Ministries more than a decade ago, will hand off ministering duties to Frank Erb. Drollinger, a former UCLA basketball player who stands 7-foot-2-inches, will focus on expanding the organization, which now leads Bible studies in 21 state capitals, to Washington, D.C., and overseas.

"To reach governmental leaders with the gospel is not an option for the mission of the church; conversely, it is the missing mandate in modern missions. To herald the gospel to every political leader every year everywhere is a matter of obedience to Scripture," he writes on his

The Assembly's newest aide barks.

And walks on four legs.

Hilly, a yellow Labrador, has her very own Assembly identification card.

The canine is a seeing-eye guide for Dan Kysor, a newly hired senior legislative assistant who is blind.

Kysor works for freshman Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, D-Davis, who jokingly calls Kysor's canine a "yellow-dog Democrat."

Kysor previously served for 12 years as government affairs director of the California Council of the Blind.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has appointed two former Republican Assembly members, Bonnie Garcia and George Plescia, to posts on the state's Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.

The jobs pay $128,000 a year. Colleague Andrew McIntosh has the details of the New Year's Eve appointments.

As McIntosh reports, Plescia and Garcia join an agency that has come under criticism for mismanagement, nepotism and conflicts of interest.

In a curious twist, Garcia, 46, and Plescia, 43, were among the lawmakers Schwarzenegger sounded off about in a 2006 private conversation later made public by the Los Angeles Times.

Schwarzenegger said of Garcia that "black blood" mixed with "Latino blood" equals "hot" -- in terms of passionate personality.

Garcia agreed she was a "hot-blooded Latina."

Plescia, then the GOP leader, was mocked by Schwarzenegger's chief of staff for looking "like the deer that keeps getting caught in my yard when I leave the gate open."

Meg Whitman keeps on inching toward running for governor of California in 2010.

The billionaire former CEO of eBay resigned posts on the boards of three major companies at the end of 2008, one more signal she's preparing for her first run for political office.

Whitman tendered her resignations on Dec. 31 for "personal reasons and time commitment," said her spokesman, Henry Gomez.

She "basically wanted to open her calendar to focus on other things," Gomez said.

Whitman resigned posts on the boards of Procter & Gamble, where she served since 2003, Dreamworks Animation SKG, where she served since 2005, and eBay, where she has served since joining the company as CEO in 1998.

I'm having some computer issues, but I have been able to notice that Leon Panetta, former White House Chief of Staff under Clinton, has been tapped for the CIA Director position.  Digby references this article from Panetta from this year:

Even though we now know that there were intelligence officials who questioned the assertion, few leaders were willing to challenge this argument for war because they knew it might undermine public support for the president's decision to invade Iraq.

More recently, President Bush vetoed a law that would require the CIA and all the intelligence services to abide by the same rules on torture as contained in the U.

Here's a guide to all the news you missed during your (and our) holiday break.

Yes, California still has a budget problem.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democratic leadership negotiated during the holiday weeks over whether Schwarzenegger would sign their majority-vote package of $18 billion in cuts and taxes.

First they were "very close" in the words of Senate leader Darrell Steinberg. Then they were "far away" in the words of Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear.

Bee cartoonist Rex Babin sketched the battling sides (see right).

Schwarzenegger headed off to Idaho for a Christmas break, though he kept in touch with legislative leaders via videoconferencing.

Then, on New Year's Eve, Schwarzenegger administration officials unveiled

There was much to like in the Governor's Weekly Radio Address this week, at least to the untrained eye.  It was presented by the Governor's Finance Director Mike Genest and includes an open plea to the Legislature.  It spoke of the dire situation our state is facing, in end of the world like terms.  A snip:

So, bear with me a moment while I speak directly to your state legislator.

Sir or Madam, I know that you didn't run for office so you could vote to raise taxes or cut spending for vital programs. I too wish there was another way. But, we have to do what is needed to bring this state back from the fiscal brink.

•  Meg Whitman looks increasingly like a candidate for the governor's gig.  She quit a couple boards of directors over the last few weeks. Great, just what we need, another political neophyte who thinks they can buy their way into the job.  That will never work...oh wait.

•  It really was rather unfortunate that Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church was vandalized over the weekend.  While the Catholic Church, and specifically the Arch Diocese of San Francisco did actively support Prop 8, I can assure you that the parishioners of Most Holy Redeemer were not the leaders or even supporters at all.  MHR is generally pretty darn gay friendly, and swastikas are never appropriate.

Holiday Roundup Part Two

By Tony Sheppard

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Directed by David Fincher

Fincher ("Zodiac," "Fight Club," "Se7en") seems like an unusual choice to direct this quiet story of a baby who is born with the characteristics of a man in his eighties, and who then ages backwards, getting physically younger as times progresses. It's a neat concept for a story that considers the nature of human relationships when two people age in opposite directions. If the retrospective narration feels a lot like "Forrest Gump," it's because it's adapted by Gump screenwriter Eric Roth.

It's a film of epic proportions and tone. In spanning eight decades, it seems a likely candidate for an assortment of technical awards, including art direction, wardrobe, and makeup.

Good morning California, here is your Wake-Up Call. Each morning PolitickerCA.com sifts through the day's news and commentary to find the stories you need to read. We scour the web for California's top political stories to pull together the important headlines in one place. Like the Wake-Up Call? Sign up to have it emailed to your laptop, Blackberry or phone. It's free and easy!

Reporting from Groveland, Calif. -- When the school board in this rural community voted to get rid of popular math teacher Ryan Dutton in September, the students at Tioga High School were so upset, the entire school boycotted class the next day. Then they decided to save his job.

What started as a civics class project soon became much more: a campaign to remove all five board members of Big Oak Flat-Groveland Unified School District.

Believing in their teacher, the students organized a petition drive to hold a recall election in this sparsely populated district near Yosemite National Park. With the help of parents, teachers and even their principal, the campaign turned in about 1,200 signatures last week for each board member -- 910 were needed to call a special election.

Reporting from Sacramento -- Frustrated that years of financing studies and demonstration projects have not translated into widespread improvement in medicine, California philanthropic foundations and think tanks are shedding their traditionally detached stances to crusade for healthcare reform in the state Capitol and in Congress.

Several of the biggest foundations have established offices in Sacramento and staffed them with experienced former advisors to lawmakers, with the aim of educating legislators to embrace their ideas.

The approach is a notable change in the foundation world, which in the past has maintained an academic distance from the political arena. It is also a delicate endeavor because such nonprofits are barred under Internal Revenue Service rules from lobbying or engaging in partisan politics.

As he ran for the White House, John F. Kennedy assured skeptical Americans that he was "not the Catholic candidate for president," but rather a "candidate for president who happens also to be Catholic." In 1961, the year he took office, Catholics accounted for 18.8% of Congress.

On Tuesday, when the 111th Congress is sworn in, about 30% of its membership will be Catholic, according to a recent analysis by Congressional Quarterly and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The shift reflects greater religious diversity both across the nation and on Capitol Hill.

"We see much more acceptance of religious groups that have in the past .